To: 
From: "Vern Humphrey" 
Reply-To: r_catholic-l{at}yahoogroups.com

Sometimes we forget the importance and reasons for the Nihil obstat and the
Imprimatur.  The lady who sort of shepherds religious study at our church
asked me to look over some tapes she got for possible use.  These are from
Gateway Films and seem pretty straightforward.

One of them, “Peter and Paul” stars Robert Foxworth (Peter) and Anthony
Hopkins (Paul).  Other stars include Eddie Albert, Raymond Burr and Jose
Ferrer.  The box proclaims the film to be “Winner of two Emmy Awards.”

Of course, it isn’t a Catholic production, and doesn’t have the Nihil
obstat and the Imprimatur.  Is that important?

Reviewing the tapes, I was struck by their portrayal of the Council of Jerusalem.

First, a quick review of the Council as it appears in Acts 15, 1-35.  To
summarize, some Jewish Christians had told Paul’s non-Jewish converts that
they had to be circumcised, and to obey Jewish dietary law.  Paul goes to
Jerusalem to discuss the issue.  Peter upholds Paul, and James proposes a
mild set of requirements – abstain from meat offered to idols or strangled,
from blood, and from unlawful marriage.  He proposes a letter be written to
this effect, and Judas and Silas, who accompanied Paul and Barnabas back
north, carried the letter to the non-Jewish Christians.

In the film, James is portrayed as saying veheminently that NOTHING should
be placed on the non-Jewish Christians, and Paul and Barnabas return.
Later, Judas and Silas suddenly appear with the letter, and Paul goes into
a rage, condemning James.

From that point, I started running and re-running the tape, checking it
scene by scene, and found dozens of places where the clear wording of the
Bible had been changed – one example being the woman “with an oracular
spirit” at Philippi.  She is shown throwing her voice into a donkey to
ridicule Paul.

Why all these changes?  Some of them might have been “artistic license,”
but many seemed deliberate to present a particular point of religious
doctrine.

In another series of tapes, “The Trial and Testimony of the Early Church” I
found things like “The early church had no buildings, no vestments, no
hierarchy.”

But both Acts and the epistles of Paul clearly tell us that the hierarchy
of bishops (episcopoi), priests (presbyters) and deacons was a very early
development.


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